Electric computer games, Beast Mastery hunting and obscure references

A certain degree of brokenness is to be expected when almost every game system is updated at once, but it’s somewhat irritating when patch-aclysm runs up against holiday events. People have been having all kinds of problems with the Headless Horseman event – disconnecting when the boss is summoned and hanging on loading screens particularly, but also the WoW executable suddenly deciding to leak memory all over the place. This also appears to affect other instanced dungeons too – I crashed pretty catastrophically out of somewhere requiring a hard restart.

With that said, onto my progress report.

I’ve taken Durkon through a few regular 5-mans now. Up till now, I’d ventured into the Headless Horseman once a day and had some trouble with that – switching between targets particularly. My nameplate addon appears to be semi-broken and I haven’t actually been able to get the standard Blizzard plates to display either. The horseman’s head is difficult to click on, so I pretty much just mash tab until I realise that I’m not going to get a nameplate, then mash random buttons. Generally, once I get the head targeted I’ll hit 2. 2 used to be Arcane Shot in 3.x but I now have it bound to Kill Command. The result of this is that my pet obediently unleashes Kill Command on his current target, the Horseman’s body. The horseman is immune to this and absorbs the whole thing. I stand there doing nothing since Kill Command is a pet attack and doesn’t start your auto-shot. Once I realise what happens there’s a 50% chance I’ll fire Arcane Shot into the head and a 50% chance I’ll fire Serpent Sting uselessly about two seconds before the head reconnects with the horseman. Repeat.

Anyway, proper Heroics. Actually, I’m much less incompetent in Heroics. I’m still not approaching the fluency I had pre-4, but I’m definitely getting this new-hunting-malarky now. I’m monitoring Kill Command cooldowns, procs, BW cooldowns and focus levels, correctly selecting shots based on the situation and still finding some tiny amount of attention to divert to whether or not my pet’s being punched through the floor. I may have been more lucid than normal yesterday however, so this may not reflect future performance.

Here’s a quick After Action Report:

Zoned into the instance! It’s Drak’Tharon. Chaaaarge!

Attack some mobs. Multi-shot! Multi-shot! Wait, where’s my damn focus gone? Why does multi-shot trigger a longer GCD than all my other shots? At this point I am standing in the Black Stuff of Death and don’t even notice until after everything’s dead. I appear to be uninjured. The healer doesn’t even berate me.

Shooty-shoot-shoot. Token effort at damaging stuff with multi shot. Ooh, an abomination! Something I can reasonably single-target! I do so. Death to it.

First boss. Hunter’s Mark up! Tank pulls. Pet attack! Serpent Sting! Kill Command! Arcane Shot! Wait, why am I standing here not attacking? Why are all my action-bar buttons that I just pushed lit up but not actually firing? This is really strange. I can see everyone else attack and move in real time, and I can see my pet auto-attacking. I can’t attack though, and a quick look on Semseye’s monitor reveals that he can’t see my movements.

Disconnected.

Reconnecting. Long loading screen. Waiting some more. Still waiting.

“A character with that name already exists.” Disconnected. Wha?! Why does that error message even exist?! If that character is already logged in then just LOG HIM OUT and then back in again, surely?

Reconnecting. Loading screen again.

Connected! I’m at the graveyard. I’m not dead or anything, just at the graveyard. Eh. I’m still in the instance group, so I manually teleport in.

Quick apologies and rocket boots back to the group. I missed the first boss completely, and get to the second one just in time to fire a single Kill Shot.

Ineffectually shoot some more mobs.

King Dred! He fears me. Bestial Wrath! Oh. Wait.

I get feared into somewhere where I can’t see out, there’s no room to move the camera around and I can’t seem to find where to get back out. I can still shoot the boss from here though, so I do so. I then spend some time jumping in random directions till I escape. This does not make me more inclined to accept the BW change gracefully.

One of the DPSers pulls the next group of mobs at the top of the stairs. Argh. The tank is at the bottom of the stairs. Argh. The tank appears to not be moving or responding in any way. Everyone dies. Well, everyone except me because… Uh, Hunter. Fortunately I have a dangerous useful electric tool and some wire. I proceed to electrocute revive Semseye’s Druid and he resurrects everyone. I love being a Hunter / Engineer.

I have to resurrect my pet. It takes 8.9 seconds…

By this time the tank has disconnected completely. We wait around for about ten minutes, then the healer and ADD DPSer that got us all killed bail. We sigh, kick the tank, Semseye switches to Resto and we requeue.

New people appear.

At this point some shooting of enemies occurs. I find some amusement firing explosive traps into groups of mobs.

I get feared again. At this point the loss of my semi-fear-immunity is causing me to grind my teeth into useless nubs.

Wait, what graveyard am I in? This is Sentinel Hill. Sentinel Hill is in Westfall. I started off in Outland, the dungeon was in Northrend, WHY THE £$%& AM I IN $&*%#@ SENTINEL HILL?!?! GODS! I DON’T EVEN THINK OUTLAND IS ON THE SAME PLANE OF EXISTENCE!

Beast Mastery DPS appears to be rather good, certainly acceptable for any current purpose. For the record, I’m only looking at my own DPS figures. There is no point whatsoever in comparing your figures to other specs, classes or gear levels at the current time.

If your game breaks while you’re in a 5-man it’ll send you to a graveyard which has absolutely nothing to do with where you started or where the instance is supposed to be.

I actually enjoyed the hell out of playing my hunter properly yesterday. Not only will I get used to the new hunter, I think I’ll probably grow to quite like it.

I can bring whatever ferocious pet I want almost all the time. Unless my raid desperately needs a certain buff covered, this means my Spirit Beast will pretty much come everywhere with me. I can bring my Spirit Beast to raids and it won’t be wrong any more! Hell, I can probably bring Cunning pets too. I might even be able to get away with Tenacity! I wonder what the DPS hit for a Tenacious pet would be?

Onwards!

EDIT: Did some quick testing, doesn’t seem like Revive Pet’s cast time is affected by being in or out of combat. Mine is 8.9 seconds. Also to do: Try some PvP, Sort out tenacity / cunning talents, stop using numbered lists and bullet points and put actual effort into formatting articles.

EDIT EDIT!

BRRRRREAAAKING!!

Blizzard has announced that Hunter DPS is to be hotfixed… Upwards!

“Specifically, we increased the damage of the signature abilities (Chimera Shot, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Kill Command) by 15-25%. This will both improve overall damage-dealing and make sure that these abilities are prioritized higher than other shots. We think this will bring hunters to a good enough state until they hit 85.”